Comment by parenthephobia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by parenthephobia | Hacker News Reader

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> What's fair is that LexisNexis be compensated for the value it has added to that Law.

Nobody has an automatic right to be compensated for doing work.

Any right to compensation arises from people having benefited from that work, and from the receipt of that benefit having been voluntary.

Citizens of Georgia are required to obey the law. Judges use the annotations when deciding whether the law has been obeyed.

So, citizens of Georgia have two choices, risk breaking the law, or pay a third party for permission to know whether or not they are breaking the law.

LexisNexis's compensation is about as legitimate as that of a protection racket.

"Say, that's a nice law you have there. Be a real shame if someone were to... annotate it."

We can also give Georgia the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a decision maker involved in this at some point who (rightly and in good faith) thought annotations might be a great thing to add to the official law to make it more robust/useful. And they had no idea of the potential negative consequences of the way they went about procuring and labeling the resulting artifact.

We have enough mistrust in the government these days and I think labels like "protection racket" should be saved for times when we really need them.

> We can also give Georgia the benefit of the doubt

Something I might be inclined to do if they fixed the problem after becoming aware of it.

Did Georgia arrange a deal whereby its citizens can read the law of their land for free?

Did they declare the annotations were no longer considered part of the law?

Or did they spend tax-payer money on prosecuting somebody for having the temerity to make copies of the law?

I think it is not at all reasonable to give Georgia the benefit of the doubt.

They have not. But any attempt to make them see the light will fall on deaf ears and make them dig in their heels when it uses rhetoric.

My main quip here comes from my strong belief that much of our political climate comes from incendiary remarks (e.g., "protection racket"). And this is counter productive. Even if you are right it is still counter productive.

You catch more flies with carefully crafted honey.

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